A Practical View of Real Christianity
By William Wilberforce
Foreword by Chuck Stetson
(2007)Discussion Guide Included
This Reading is an Executive Summary of A Practical View of Real Christianity by William Wilberforce with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson.
William Wilberforce is justly honored for his work to end the Atlantic slave trade. Less well known is the second of his “great objects”—the transformation of culture, which Wilberforce knew was a prerequisite for abolition.
With the summer 2007 Trinity Forum Reading, we join the celebration of the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade with an executive summary of Wilberforce’s electrifying 1797 manifesto on the Christian life and its role in society.
A Practical View of Real Christianity (to use its short title) was a best-seller for fifty years and contributed directly to the Second Great Awakening. Our edition is abridged and with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson, who is, among other things, a Manhattan investment banker, chair of the Wilberforce Central alliance, chair of the Bible Literacy Project, and producer of the upcoming documentary film on Wilberforce, The Better Hour.
The Reading focuses on the chapters Wilberforce himself emphasized as particularly critical for leaders. In a letter to his friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, Wilberforce wrote,
I am not unreasonable enough to ask you to read my book: but as it is more likely that when you are extremely busy than at any other time you may take it up for ten minutes, let me recommend it to you in that case to open on the last section of the fourth chapter, wherein you will see wherein the religion which I espouse differs practically from the common orthodox system. Also the sixth chapter has almost a right to a perusal, being the basis of all politics, and particularly addressed to such as you.
Stetson’s Foreword gives us an overview of the book in its historic setting, addressing its themes, influence, and the personal habits and faith of Wilberforce that made it such a powerful force for cultural transformation in his day—and in ours.
Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labor, study, or inquiry. This is the more preposterous, because Christianity, being a revelation from God, and not the invention of man, discovering to us new relations, with their correspondent duties; containing also doctrines, and motives, and practical principles, and rules, peculiar to itself, and almost as new in their nature as supreme in their excellence, we cannot reasonably expect to become proficients in it by the accidental intercourses of life, as one might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy, or a scheme of mere morals.
—William Wilberforce, chapter one
The book's powerful influence on readers may be explained by Wilberforce’s strategic approach, social standing, and careful preparation, and perhaps by the receptivity of the audience. But it also carries authority because of its spiritual depth and the consistency between the author’s expressed opinions and his daily life. His personal integrity gave it credibility. It also offers an answer to the question that inevitably arises when we consider Wilberforce’s accomplishments: How did he manage to persevere through decades of political infighting and personal attacks?
—Chuck Stetson, from the Foreword
Category: Readings (No. 46)
Ex Tenebris
By Russell Kirk
Foreword by Vigen Guroian
(2007)Discussion Guide Included
“Ex Tenebris” is a ghostly tale by Russell Kirk with a Foreword by Senior Fellow Vigen Guroian.
Russell Kirk (1918–1994) was a leading social critic, thinker, and writer best known for his work to define and energize the conservative movement in the United States with such books as The Roots of American Order and The Conservative Mind. But he also wrote fiction, including novels and several short stories, mostly gothic tales of horror and suspense; he won the 1977 World Fantasy Award for short fiction. Dr. Guroian’s edition of Kirk’s collected short stories, Ancestral Shadows, was released in 2004.
“Ex Tenebris,” an early Kirk story, tells the tale of elderly Mrs. Oliver, who retires to a cottage in the now-abandoned English village of her childhood. She is harassed by the local planning officer until someone emerges from the shadows to intervene on her behalf. This story will amuse you—and perhaps cause the hairs to rise on the back of your neck—and will leave you thinking about architecture, tradition, what human beings really want, and how best to help our neighbors.
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Heroes and Contemporaries
A series of profiles of leading figures and their strengths and flaws following the model of Winston Churchill's "Great Contemporaries."By Jonathan Aitken
(Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006)
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Porridge and Passion
By Jonathan Aitken
(Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006)
In this sequel to his first volume of autobiography, Pride and Perjury, Aitken starts his story as he is taken down from the courtroom and incarcerated at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
How this Old Etonian former Cabinet Minister on Mrs Thatcher’s inner circle managed to establish new relationships and lasting friendships with fellow prisoners is fascinating—so too is this account of how religious belief transformed his life. Aitken has lost none of his charm, fluency, and determination—and he has found an authentic new life which readers of this entertaining new book will be able to judge for themselves.
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Gentle Regrets
Thoughts from a Life
A quiet, witty but also serious and moving account of the ways in which life has brought Scruton to think what he thinks, and to be who he is.By Roger Scruton
(Continuum, 2006)
His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book.
248 pages, paper.
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News from Somewhere
On Settling
Collected essays from Scruton’s weekly articles in the Financial Times on country matters.By Roger Scruton
(Continuum, 2006)
Always beautifully written, one of these pieces (Vegetables) won the 2002 prize from The Queen’s English Society for the best piece of prose writing of the year.
177 pages
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Invitation to the Classics
A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read
By Os Guinness and Louise Cowan, editors
(Baker Books, 2006)
A paperback edition of our acclaimed guide to literature.
Fifty brief essays by a number of respected Christian literary scholars that extend invitations to readers to experience anew or for the first time the wonder and the beauty of selected classics. Each essay contains a biographical and historical sketch, a summary of the work being considered, suggestions and bibliographies for further study and questions raised by the text about the interaction of Christian faith and society. Also includes other essays on different genres.
384 pages. Hardcover edition published in 1998.
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The Great Omission
Dallas Willard challenges the thought that we can be Christians without being disciples and calls on believers to restore what should be the heart of Christianity—being active disciples of Jesus Christ.By Dallas Willard
(Monarch Books, 2006)
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The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
A historical discussion of the role scriptural interpretation and church authority structures played in the arguments over slavery and the Civil War.By Mark A. Noll
(The University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
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Is There a Culture War?
A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life
James Davison Hunter and Alan Wolfe join in dialogue to search for the truth about America's cultural condition.By James Davison Hunter and Alan Wolfe, eds.
(Brookings Institution Press, 2006)
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The Fragrance of God
Further meditations on gardening. Vigen Guroian explores bitter losses and blessings of life through the lens of his own life as he and his family move from Maryland to a new home near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.By Vigen Guroian
(Eerdmans, 2006)
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The Meaning of Marriage
Family, State, Market, and Morals
A thorough discussion of the case for marriage as an intrinsically good institution.By Jean Bethke Elshtain, et al
(Spence Publishing Company, 2006)
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Evangelicals in the Public Square
Four Formative Voices on Political Thought and Action
An examination of evangelical political thought over the past fifty years through four key figures which argues that, in addition to Scripture, the evangelical political movement should be informed by the tradition of natural law.By J. Budziszewski
Foreword by Introduction by Michael Cromartie, Afterword by Jean Bethke Elshtain
(Baker Academic, 2006)
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God at Work
The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement
By David W. Miller
(Oxford University Press, 2006)
Done well, the integration of faith and work has positive implications at the personal level, as well as for corporate ethics and the broader economic sphere.
At the same time, increasing expressions of religion and spiritual practices at work also present the threat of divisiveness and discrimination.
Drawing on the insights of theological ethics as well as the sociology of religion, Miller analyzes the history of the modern day Faith at Work movement from its roots in the late 19th century to its modern formulation and trajectory. He examines the diversity of its members and modes of expression, and constructs a new framework for understanding, interpreting, and critiquing the movement and its future. Miller concludes that workers and professionals have a deep and lasting desire to live a holistic life, to integrate the claims of their faith with the demands of their work. He documents the surprising abdication of this field by church and theological academy and its embrace, ironically, by the management academy.
Offering compelling new evidence of the depth and breadth of spirituality at work, Miller concludes that faith at work is a bona fide social movement and here to stay. He establishes the importance of this movement, identifies the possibilities and problems, and points toward future research questions. God at Work is essential reading for business scholars and leaders, theologians and clergy, and anyone interested in the integration of faith and work.
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Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power
By David Aikman
(Regnery, 2006)
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